Garden Tour Series: Sowing The Seeds

As many readers of this blog and its social media offshoots now know, I took part in a garden tour of Martha’s farm in Bedford, New York, on Thursday, June 5^th. Many of you have asked how this all came to be. This is the story of how it began.

It was early March when I received an email from my good friends Bernie Wong and Dennis Landon with a very intriguing proposition. (Martha knows us three through this blog. She enjoys and admires my efforts as an editor and curator in documenting her life's work on this blog since 2006, as well as its Instagram component, and she is deeply enamored of the decorating, collecting and baking skills of Dennis and Bernie who have been collecting Martha Stewart products since the 1990s. We were invited to attend her Great American Tag Sale in 2022 and were guests on her podcast the following year). 

The email suggested that we write to Martha with a proposal for a spring garden tour for some key members of the Martha Moments Facebook group, to take place either this year or next - we would let her decide the date. Daring to dream a little bigger, we thought maybe we should volunteer our services to help in whatever way we could to facilitate the planning process. I agreed that it was time, and I sat down to write the letter, which Bernie and Dennis later sent to Martha. We then simply crossed our fingers and waited for a response.

Three weeks later, the response from Martha was a resounding yes! We were told by her assistant, Matt, that she was touched by our reaching out and that she hurriedly showed our letter to many of her friends and colleagues on the farm. We had little time to waste basking in the glow of our excitement, so we set to work on the planning process.

We were given some parameters, of course, most notably a maximum of 30 people. Deciding on the guestlist was a very daunting task, especially considering the Facebook group now has nearly 7,000 members. If we could have, we would have invited every single friend we have in this group, but that was not possible. We each contributed a list of names, keeping in mind that we wanted to represent a diverse cross section of Martha’s fans. We wanted a good balance of men and women, various age groups, and people from all over North America. The names that came to mind were people who had been with the group almost since the beginning or who had contributed to the Martha Moments blog regularly with photography, insight, editorial feedback and research: we wanted the group to be spirited and enthusiastic, and also very knowledgeable about Martha, her homes and her brand.

Once the guestlist was decided upon, we created a central email that all three of us had access to in order to coordinate everything: schedules, arrival times, vehicles, accommodations, etc. I drafted an online invitation (shown above) that we sent to each of the guests via email. The response was overwhelming! Everyone was so excited! We did have a few declines as well as a few last-minute cancellations, mostly due to scheduling conflicts, but those names were replaced with other avid Martha Moments contributors, where possible. A Google spreadsheet was created, enabling attendees to fill in phone numbers, addresses and all contact information, as well as personal itineraries - arrival and departure times, modes of transportation, and their planned accommodations. 

Then, we set about asking our friend Carey Lowe in Chico, California, who is a professional stationer (The Idea Emporium), to design invitations for each of the attendees. She did an extraordinary job and we were overwhelmed by the quality of the finished product. Carey volunteered this service and also contributed nametags for each of the recipients. The envelopes were all stamped by hand using the Martha by Mail fern stamp, which Bernie and Dennis mailed to Carey for use in this project. Carey also embossed the Martha Moments logo on the back of the envelope. The overall feeling is one of luxurious quality. The stationery is heavy cardstock and the envelopes are sturdy. There are ribbon and nameplate details, as well as embossing. The invitation is tactile, textured and replete with references to so many Martha hallmarks, including pale shades of green and grey, faux bois and familiar fonts. 

Carey sent them out to each of the recipients in mid-May and everyone circled their calendars in anticipation of one of the most exciting days ever!

(Please stay tuned, I will be blogging extensively about this event in the coming weeks).